Editing Gary Snyder (section)

==Life and career==

===Early life===
Snyder was born in [[San Francisco, California]], to Harold and Lois Hennessy Snyder.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Taesali |first=Penina Ava |date=November 3, 2015 |title=Gary Snyder shows a way into poetry |url=https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/life/2015/11/03/gary-snyder-shows-way-into-poetry/74725460/ |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date=August 9, 2024 |website=Statesman Journal |language=en-US}}</ref> Snyder is of German, Scottish, Irish and English ancestry. His family, impoverished by the [[Great Depression]],<ref name = "gtksnn">{{Cite web |url=http://www.everyday-beat.org/everyday/essay/Snyder/ |title=Chapter 14: The Dharma Bum |access-date=2019-04-18 |archive-date=2016-04-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160410212834/http://everyday-beat.org/everyday/essay/snyder/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> moved to [[King County, Washington]],<ref>''Seattle Times'', 5-28-2009</ref> when he was two years old. There, they tended dairy-cows, kept laying-hens, had a small orchard, and made cedar-wood shingles.<ref>Snyder, Gary (Sept/Oct 1984) "Choosing Your Place-and Taking a Stand" interview with G.S., ''The Mother Earth News'', p.89.</ref><ref>Snyder (2007) p. 61</ref> At the age of seven, Snyder was bedridden for four months by an accident. "So my folks brought me piles of books from the [[Seattle Public Library]]," he recalled in an interview, "and it was then I really learned to read and from that time on was voracious — I figure that accident changed my life. At the end of four months, I had read more than most kids do by the time they're eighteen. And I didn't stop."<ref name = "gtksnn"/> Also during his ten childhood years in Washington, Snyder became aware of the presence of the Coast [[Salishan languages|Salish]] people and developed an interest in the [[indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] peoples in general and their traditional relationship with nature.<ref name = "gtksnn"/>

In 1942, following his parents' divorce, Snyder moved to [[Portland, Oregon]], with his mother and his younger sister, Anthea.<ref name="Suiter 54">Suiter (2002) p 54</ref>  Their mother, Lois Snyder Hennessy (born Wilkey),<ref>Snyder (2007) p. 149</ref> worked during this period as a reporter for ''[[The Oregonian]]''. One of his boyhood jobs was as a newspaper copy-boy at the ''Oregonian''.<ref name="Suiter 54"/>  During his teen years, he attended [[Lincoln High School (Portland, Oregon)|Lincoln High School]],<ref name="Suiter 54"/> worked as a camp counselor, and went mountain-climbing with the [[Mazamas]] youth-group.<ref>Halper, Jon (1991). ''Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life''. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. {{ISBN|0-87156-616-8}}</ref> Climbing remained an interest of his, especially during his twenties and thirties.<ref name = "gtksnn"/> In 1947, he started attending [[Reed College]] on a scholarship.<ref Name = "gtksnn"/> Here, he met, and, for a time, roomed with the writer Carl Proujan, and became acquainted with the young poets [[Philip Whalen]] and [[Lew Welch]]. During his time at Reed, Snyder published his first poems in a student journal. In 1948 he spent the summer working as a seaman. To get this job, he joined the now-defunct [[Marine Cooks and Stewards]] union,<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 87</ref> and would later work as a seaman in the mid-1950s to gain experience of other cultures in port cities. Snyder married Alison Gass in 1950; they separated after seven months, and divorced in 1952.<ref>Alison Murie</ref><ref name="Suiter 325"/>

While attending Reed, Snyder conducted folklore research on the [[Warm Springs Indian Reservation]] in [[central Oregon]].<ref name=reedmag08>{{cite news|title=Listening to Indians/Snyder goes logging|first=Robert E.|last=Moore|work=Reed magazine|date=Winter 2008|pages=14}}</ref> He graduated with a dual degree in [[anthropology]] and literature in 1951.<ref>Smith (1999) p. 10</ref> Snyder's senior thesis, entitled ''The Dimensions of a Myth'', employed perspectives from anthropology, folklore, psychology, and literature to examine a myth of the Pacific Northwest's Haida people.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Dimensions of a Myth|last=Snyder|first=Gary|publisher=Reed College|year=1951|location=Reed College Library, Portland, Oregon, US|pages=1–4}}</ref> He spent the following few summers working as a [[log scaler|timber scaler]] at Warm Springs, developing relationships with its people that were rooted less in academia.<ref name=reedmag08/> This experience formed the basis for some of his earliest published poems (including "A Berry Feast"),<ref name = "gtksnn"/> later collected in the book ''The Back Country''.  He also encountered the basic ideas of Buddhism and, through its arts, some East Asian traditional attitudes toward nature. He went to [[Indiana University (Bloomington)|Indiana University]] with a graduate fellowship to study anthropology.<ref name = "gtksnn"/> (Snyder also began practicing self-taught [[Zen]] meditation.) He left after a single semester to return to San Francisco and to 'sink or swim as a poet'.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 7</ref> Snyder worked for two summers in the [[North Cascades]] in Washington as a [[fire lookout]], on Crater Mountain in 1952 and Sourdough Mountain in 1953 (both locations on the upper [[Skagit River]]). His attempts to get another lookout stint in 1954 (at the peak of [[McCarthyism]]), however, failed. He found himself barred from working for the government due to his association with the Marine Cooks and Stewards.<ref>Suiter (2002) pp. 83–94</ref>  Instead, he went back to Warm Springs to work in [[cable logging|logging]] as a [[choker setter]]. This experience contributed to his ''Myths and Texts'' and the essay ''Ancient Forests of the Far West''.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 104</ref>

===The Beats===
Back in San Francisco, Snyder lived with Whalen, who shared his growing interest in [[Zen Buddhism|Zen]]. Snyder's reading of the writings of [[D. T. Suzuki]] had in fact been a factor in his decision not to continue as a graduate student in anthropology, and in 1953 he enrolled at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], to study Asian culture and languages. He studied [[ink and wash painting]] under [[Chiura Obata]] and [[Tang dynasty]] poetry under Ch'en Shih-hsiang.<ref>Suiter (2002) pp. 82–83</ref>  Snyder continued to spend summers working in the forests, including one summer as a trail-builder in [[Yosemite]]. He spent some months in 1955 and 1956 living in a cabin (which he dubbed "Marin-an") outside [[Mill Valley, California]] with [[Jack Kerouac]]. It was also at this time that Snyder was an occasional student at the [[American Academy of Asian Studies]], where [[Saburo Hasegawa]] and [[Alan Watts]], among others, were teaching. Hasegawa introduced Snyder to the treatment of [[landscape painting]] as a meditative practice. This inspired Snyder to attempt something equivalent in poetry, and with Hasegawa's encouragement, he began work on ''[[Mountains and Rivers Without End]]'', which would be completed and published 40 years later.<ref>Suiter (2002) pp. 188–189</ref>  During these years, Snyder was writing and collecting his own work, as well as embarking on the translation of the "Cold Mountain" poems by the 8th-century Chinese recluse [[Hanshan (poet)|Han Shan]]; this work appeared in [[chapbook]] form in 1959, under the title ''Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems''.

Snyder met [[Allen Ginsberg]] when the latter sought Snyder out on the recommendation of [[Kenneth Rexroth]].<ref>Fields, Rick (1981) ''How the Swans Came to the Lake'', p. 212. Boulder, CO: Shamballa.</ref> Then, through Ginsberg, Snyder and Kerouac came to know each other. This period provided the materials for Kerouac's novel ''[[The Dharma Bums]]'', and Snyder was the inspiration for the novel's main character, Japhy Ryder, in the same way [[Neal Cassady]] had inspired Dean Moriarty in ''[[On the Road]]''. As the large majority of people in the Beat movement had urban backgrounds, writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac found Snyder, with his backcountry and manual-labor experience and interest in things rural, a refreshing and almost exotic individual. [[Lawrence Ferlinghetti]] later referred to Snyder as 'the Thoreau of the Beat Generation'.

Snyder read his poem "A Berry Feast" at the [[Six Gallery reading|poetry reading at the Six Gallery]] in San Francisco (October 7, 1955) that heard the first reading of Ginsberg's poem "Howl" and marked the emergence into mainstream publicity of the Beats. This also marked Snyder's first involvement with the Beats, although he was not a member of the original New York circle, having entered the scene through his association with Whalen and Welch. As recounted in Kerouac's ''Dharma Bums'', even at age 25 Snyder felt he could have a role in the fateful future meeting of West and East. Snyder's first book, ''Riprap'', which drew on his experiences as a forest lookout and on the trail crew in Yosemite, was published in 1959.

===Japan and India===
Independently, some of the Beats, including Whalen, had become interested in Zen, but Snyder was one of the more serious scholars of the subject among them, preparing in every way he could think of for eventual study in Japan. In 1955, the [[First Zen Institute of America]] offered him a scholarship for a year of Zen training in Japan, but the [[United States Department of State|State Department]] refused to issue him a passport, informing him that "it has been alleged you are a Communist."  A subsequent [[District of Columbia Court of Appeals]] ruling forced a change in policy, and Snyder got his passport.<ref>Suiter (2002) pp. 124–125</ref>  In the end, his expenses were paid by [[Ruth Fuller Sasaki]], for whom he was supposed to work; but initially he served as personal attendant and English tutor<ref name="Stirling 83">Stirling (2006) p. 83</ref> to [[abbot (Buddhism)|Zen abbot]] Miura Isshu, at Rinko-in, a temple in [[Shokoku-ji]] in [[Kyoto]], where American Buddhist popularizer [[Dwight Goddard]] and British author and Japanese culture devotee [[R. H. Blyth]] had preceded him.<ref>Suiter (2002) pp. 192–193</ref>  Mornings, after ''[[zazen]]'', ''[[Sutra#Buddhism|sutra]]'' chanting, and chores for the abbot, he took Japanese classes, bringing his spoken Japanese up to a level sufficient for ''[[kōan]]'' study. He developed a friendship with   [[Philip Yampolsky]], an eminent translator and scholar of Zen Buddhism, who took him around Kyoto.<ref name="Stirling 83"/> In early July 1955, he took [[Refuge (Buddhism)|refuge]] and requested to become Miura's disciple, thus formally becoming a Buddhist.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 208</ref>

In 1958, he returned to California via the Persian Gulf, Turkey, Sri Lanka and various Pacific Islands, voyaging as a crewman in the [[engine room]] on the [[oil tanker]] ''Sappa Creek'',<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 235</ref><ref name="Smith 12">Smith (2000) p. 12</ref> and took up residence at Marin-an again.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 238</ref> He turned one room into a ''[[zendo]]'', with about six regular participants. In early June, he met the poet [[Joanne Kyger]]. She became his girlfriend, and eventually his wife.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 241</ref>  In 1959, he shipped for Japan again, where he rented a cottage outside Kyoto.<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 245</ref>  He became the first foreign disciple of [[Rinzai]] ''[[Rōshi]]'' [[Oda Sesso]], the new [[Rōshi|abbot]] of [[Daitoku-ji]].<ref>Suiter (2002) p. 246</ref>  He married Kyger on February 28, 1960, immediately after her arrival in Japan, which Fuller Sasaki insisted they do, if they were to live together and be associated with the [[First Zen Institute of America|Nichibei Daiichi Zen Kyokai]],.<ref name="Stirling 110">Stirling (2006) p. 110</ref> Snyder and Kyger were married from 1960 to 1965.<ref name="Suiter 325">Suiter (2002) p. 325</ref>

During the period between 1956 and 1969, Snyder went back and forth between California and Japan,<ref name="Suiter 250">Suiter (2002) p. 250</ref> studying Zen, working on translations with Fuller Sasaki, and finally living for a while with a group of other people on the small, volcanic island of [[Suwanosejima]]. His previous study of written Chinese assisted his immersion in the Zen tradition, which has its roots in [[Tang dynasty]] China, and enabled him to support himself while he was living in Japan. Snyder received the Zen precepts and his dharma name of ''Chofu'' ("Listen to the Wind"), and lived occasionally as a ''de facto'' [[Buddhist monk|monk]], but never registered to become a [[Buddhist priest|priest]],<ref name="Suiter 250"/> planning eventually to return to the United States to "turn the wheel of the dharma". During this time, he published two collections of his poems from the early to mid 1950s, ''Myths & Texts'' (1960), and ''Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End'' (1965). This last was the beginning of a project that he was to continue working on until the late 1990s. Much of Snyder's poetry expresses experiences, environments, and insights involved with the work he has done for a living: logger, fire-lookout, steam-freighter crew, translator, carpenter, and itinerant poet, among other things. During his years in Japan, Snyder was also initiated into ''[[Shugendo]]'', a highly [[syncretism|syncretic]] [[asceticism|ascetic]] religious cult.<ref name="Kyger 103">Kyger (2000) p. 103</ref>

In the early 1960s he traveled for six months through India with Kyger, Ginsberg, and Ginsberg's partner, the poet and actor [[Peter Orlovsky]].<ref name="Smith 12"/> Their sojourn took them to Sri Lanka, then to south India, and eventually travelling up into the north. They observed the folkways of the various peoples, went on hikes, stopped at landmarks, temples, burning ghats, monastic caves, and ashrams. As they went, they learned in part through conversations with many Indians and Europeans who could speak English. They visited numerous cities, including Madras, Calcutta, Mumbai, Banaras, Old Delhi and New Delhi, as well as Rishikesh and Hardwar, and Bodh Gaya (where Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, attained enlightenment). Especially important to Snyder and Ginsberg, in Dharamashala the Dalai Lama met with them and they discussed Buddhist principles and practices.<ref>Snyder, Gary 2009 ''Passage Through India''. Counterpoint, New York. ISBN 1593761783</ref>

Snyder and Kyger separated soon after their trip to India, and divorced in 1965.

===Dharma Bums===
In the 1950s, Snyder took part in the rise of a strand of Buddhist anarchism emerging from the [[Beat generation|Beat]] movement. Snyder was the inspiration for the  Japhy Ryder character in Kerouac's novel ''[[The Dharma Bums]]'' (1958). Snyder had spent considerable time in Japan studying Zen Buddhism, and in 1961 published an essay, "Buddhist Anarchism", where he described the connection he saw between these two traditions, originating in different parts of the world: "The [[mercy]] of the [[Western culture|West]] has been [[social revolution]]; the mercy of the [[East]] has been individual insight into the basic self/void." He advocated "using such means as [[civil disobedience]], outspoken criticism, protest, [[pacifism]], voluntary poverty and even gentle violence" and defended "the right of individuals to smoke [[cannabis (drug)|ganja]], eat [[peyote]], be [[polygyny|polygynous]], [[polyandrous]] or homosexual" which he saw as being banned by "the Judaeo-Capitalist-Christian-Marxist West".<ref>{{cite book |author=Robert Graham |title=Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 2 |year=2009 |publisher=Black Rose Books Ltd. |pages=240–243 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8tnnkLRvkuQC&q=%22Buddhist+anarchism%22&pg=PA240 |isbn=9781551643106 }}</ref>

===Kitkitdizze===
In 1966, Snyder joined Allen Ginsberg, [[Zentatsu Richard Baker|Richard Baker]], future Roshi of the San Francisco Zen Center, and [[Kriyananda]] aka Donald J Walters, to buy {{convert|100|acre|ha}} in the San Juan Ridge area of the Sierra-Nevada foothills, north of Nevada City, Northern California. In 1967 Snyder's book ''The Back Country'' appeared, again mainly a collection of poems stretching back over about fifteen years. Snyder devoted a section at the end of the book to his translations of eighteen poems by [[Kenji Miyazawa]]. In 1970, [[Chamaebatia foliolosa|Kitkitdizze]] (as he named his portion of the San Juan Ridge property) would become his home.<ref name="Suiter 251"/> By that point, Snyder had already spent the summers of 1967 and 1968 with a group of Japanese back-to-the-land drop-outs known as [[The Tribe (Buzoku)|"the Tribe"]] on [[Suwanosejima]]<ref name="Halper 94">Halper (1991) p. 94</ref> (a small Japanese island in the [[East China Sea]]), where they combed the beaches, gathered edible plants, and fished. On the island, on August 6,<ref name="Suiter 251">Suiter (2002) p. 251</ref> 1967, he married [[Masa Uehara]], whom he had met in Osaka a year earlier.<ref name="Suiter 250"/> In 1968, they moved to California with their infant son, Kai (born April 1968).<ref name="Suiter 251"/> Their second son, Gen, was born a year later. They were shortly able to move onto the San Juan Ridge property, near the South Yuba River, where they and friends built a house that drew on rural-Japanese and Native-American architectural ideas.

===Later life and writings===
''Regarding Wave'' appeared in January 1970, a stylistic departure offering poems that were more emotional, metaphoric, and lyrical. From the late 1960s, the content of Snyder's poetry increasingly had to do with family, friends, and community. He continued to publish poetry throughout the 1970s, much of it reflecting his re-immersion in life on the American continent and his involvement in the [[back-to-the-land movement]] in the Sierra foothills. His 1974 book ''[[Turtle Island (book)|Turtle Island]]'', titled after [[Turtle Island (North America)|a Native American name for the North American continent]], won a Pulitzer Prize. It also influenced numerous West Coast Generation X writers, including [[Alex Steffen]], [[Bruce Barcott]] and [[Mark Morford]]. His 1983 book ''Axe Handles'', won an American Book Award. Snyder wrote numerous essays setting forth his views on poetry, culture, social experimentation, and the environment. Many of these were collected in ''Earth House Hold'' (1969), ''The Old Ways'' (1977), ''The Real Work'' (1980), ''The Practice of the Wild'' (1990), ''A Place in Space'' (1995), and ''The Gary Snyder Reader'' (1999). In 1979, Snyder published ''He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth'', based on his Reed thesis. Snyder's journals from his travel in India in the mid-1960s appeared in 1983 under the title ''Passage Through India''. In these, his wide-ranging interests in cultures, natural history, religions, social critique, contemporary America, and hands-on aspects of rural life, as well as his ideas on literature, were given full-blown articulation.

In 1986, Snyder became a professor in the writing program at the [[University of California, Davis]]. Snyder is now professor emeritus of English.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://english.ucdavis.edu/people/directory/fzsnyder|title=Gary Snyder-Department of English|access-date=2009-04-13}}</ref>

Snyder was married to Uehara for twenty-two years; the couple divorced in 1989. Snyder married [[Carole Lynn Koda]] (October 3, 1947 – June 29, 2006),<ref>Snyder (2007) p. 161</ref> who would write ''Homegrown: Thirteen brothers and sisters, a century in America'', in 1991,<ref name="Suiter 325"/><ref>Western Literature Association (1997) p. 316</ref> and remained married to her until her death of cancer. She had been born in the third generation of a successful Japanese-American farming family, noted for its excellent rice. She shared Buddhism, extensive travels, and work with Snyder, and performed independent work as a naturalist.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theunion.com/article/20060707/OBITUARIES/60707001|title=Sponsored Obituary: Carole Koda|date=2006-07-07|access-date=2008-05-26|archive-date=2011-05-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110524102949/http://www.theunion.com/article/20060707/OBITUARIES/60707001|url-status=dead}}</ref>

As Snyder's involvement in environmental issues and his teaching grew, he seemed to move away from poetry for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in 1996 he published the complete ''[[Mountains and Rivers Without End]]'', a mixture of the lyrical and epic modes celebrating the act of inhabitation on a specific place on the planet. This work was written over a 40-year period. It has been translated into Japanese, French and Russian. In 2004 Snyder published ''Danger on Peaks'', his first collection of new poems in twenty years.

Snyder was awarded the Levinson Prize from the journal ''Poetry'', the American Poetry Society Shelley Memorial Award (1986), was inducted into the [[American Academy of Arts and Letters]] (1987), and won the 1997 Bollingen Prize for Poetry and, that same year, the John Hay Award for Nature Writing.<ref>[http://wwwenglish.ucdavis.edu/faculty/snyder/a_brief_biography.htm A Brief Biography] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513201100/http://wwwenglish.ucdavis.edu/faculty/snyder/a_brief_biography.htm |date=2008-05-13 }}</ref>  Snyder also has the distinction of being the first American to receive the Buddhism Transmission Award (for 1998) from the Japan-based Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai Foundation. For his ecological and social activism, Snyder was named as one of the 100 visionaries selected in 1995 by ''[[Utne Reader]]''.

Snyder's life and work were celebrated in John J. Healy's 2010 documentary ''The Practice of the Wild.'' The film, which debuted at the 53rd [[San Francisco International Film Festival]], features wide-ranging, running conversations between Snyder and poet, writer and longtime colleague [[Jim Harrison]], filmed mostly on the [[Hearst Ranch]] in [[San Simeon]], California. The film also shows archival photographs and film of Snyder's life.<ref>[http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-practice-of-the-wild/5150 '"The Practice of the Wild ". ''Slant Magazine''  8 November 2010]</ref>